By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 1:15:18 PM

A client of mine has standardized on Virtual PC 2007 for desktop virtual machine needs (not for their VDI or Server VMs, but just simple desktop VM needs).  They recently created a transform for customizing the default install, but after deployment noticed that there was one major issue with the package.  The issue is that VPC picks a subfolder of "My Documents" named "My Virtual Machines" as it's default store location when creating a new virtual machine.  This would obviously be a very bad choice when using Group Policy enforced managed folder redirection (just imagine how slow the VMs would be if they were stored on the network!, not to mention issues around home drive quotas, etc).  Anyway, the packaging team couldn't find an option in the app, nor a registry setting anywhere to change the default folder location for this.  Also, since we're dealing with a network location, you can't get by with a subst command or junction point.&am ... Read More »

By Shawn Bass on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 2:24:00 PM

I recently came across this blog entry posted on the App-V blog stating that Process Monitor was recently updated to support the new App-V Release Candidate that was just released last week.  You can get version 1.35 of Process Monitor here.   Also, did you know that you can launch the SysInternals tools directly from the web by visiting live.sysinternals.com  Check it out, it's pretty helpful.

By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 8:39:35 AM

Justin Zarb recently blogged about a video he found from a TechEd session where John Sheehan gave an overview of the new features in SoftGrid / MAV 4.5.  I'd love to give all sort of nice comments about the video, but I'm plagued by the Silverlight Download Error 4001 so I can't even watch the video.  Anyway, I'm passing it along in case you haven't seen Justin's blog entry about it.

By Shawn Bass on Tuesday, March 04, 2008 3:43:38 PM

I'm at a client side right now working on a large SoftGrid implementation project. I'm going through the motions sequencing applications when I came across one application from Reuters named StockVal. While I initially figured that this would be a slam dunk sequencing process, I discovered that it was anything but that. You see it's become apparent to me that application virtualization doesn't actually save you from your own stupidity. What do I mean by this? I mean that one of the biggest challenges with traditional software packaging is that packagers do stupid things. What kind of stupid things?  Well here's some that I've personally solved over the last year:

1) Packager snapshots MDAC 2.5 RTM version registry key (the Data Access version key) and distributes said package to over 3,000 desktops. Those desktops that attempt to install anything that requires MDAC 2.7+ fail as they are stating that the machine needs MDAC 2.7. Well XP doesn't come with MDAC ... Read More »

By Shawn Bass on Sunday, January 20, 2008 1:36:11 PM

Al has a very nice overview of Citrix XenServer 4.01 and areas that it compares/differs to VMWare ESX.  It's a great read.

By Shawn Bass on Saturday, January 19, 2008 8:19:37 PM

A few weeks ago I set out to get a test rig running for lab VMs running under Citrix Xen and Server 2008's Hyper-V.  However, my lab (READ: basement) already has 4 rack servers, a Citrix Access Gateway, several routers, a 1.5TB NAS, and a 3000kva UPS.  I was a bit concerned that bringing another rack server that sounds like a jet turbine into the basement might be a bit too much for the boss (READ: wife)

Since I wanted this rig to be used only for lab VM (my prod VMs run on the redundant rack servers), I decided that a simple white box system with a good proc and sufficient RAM should do the trick perfectly.  The biggest concern that I had was I knew that both Citrix Xen and Server 2008 Hyper-V require that you use 64-bit CPUs (not a big deal today) and a BIOS that supports setting Intel-VT or AMD Pacifica to enabled (this i ... Read More »

By Shawn Bass on Monday, January 14, 2008 10:43:52 AM

From the SoftGrid Team Blog I learned that Microsoft recently published a guide that provides information on how to setup Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (formerly SoftGrid) and how to implement the different modes of Streaming/Virtualization that are available in 4.5.  The guide can be found here.

By Shawn Bass on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 4:48:19 PM

VMware has recently released version 3.5 of their Virtual Infrastructure suite.  This release proves yet again that VMware is king in the virtualization space.  I'm not going to go into details of all of the new features as it's already been well covered on other sites.  Here are two great overviews of the new features from VMblog and Virtualization.info.

By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 5:21:14 PM

Aaron Parker posted a follow up article to his initial work in trying to get Adobe Acrobat 8 as a virtualized package under SoftGrid.  It seems as though Aaron has decided that it's just not going to be practical to deploy Acrobat via SoftGrid as there are a lot of technical issues that involve separation of the app and it's not practical for real world deployment.  What's interesting about this is that Aaron was able to get Acrobat 8 working in Altiris SVS.

By Shawn Bass on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 3:15:25 PM

Brian Kelly has posted a two part series titled "SoftGrid Operations Guide" on the SoftGrid Team Blog.  This two part guide covers some topics that would be useful to any SoftGrid admin such as moving a Softgrid datastore, publishing apps in Citrix, how to preload applications, etc.  Check out Part 1 and Part 2.